Poets Aplenty

How many people do you know who have
poetic minds, poetic hearts, poetic souls?
Per hundred, maybe ten or so, so we have
Romz, Dino, Mags, Daps, ‘Lenn (though he
rarely sheds his lawyerly garb), Larry (with
his guitar), Marz (craft), Caloy (prayers),
Mayo (technocratese), Nanding (narratives),
JoeSam (Americanese), Abel (playfulness),
Chito (photography), hey that’s more than
ten already, and they’re all in this page, must
be the ensaymada we ate in the canteen,
or is it the company that lends itself to
poetic twists and turns of untortured souls,
settled in each one’s homes with their loving
wives and children, took after them, actually,
poets too, some in words, some in deeds,
it’s they way we look at things, in colored
glasses, the same worn by Shakespeare,
Wordsworth, Hopkins, Simon & Garfunkel,
O’brien, Paraiso, Alano, and so we
live and write on and on, do we live to
write or do we write to live, you know the
answer to that, for we are such gluttons
with words that inspire and soar, how can
it be, years and years later, the batch that
learned about sex in second year from Saniano,
trying to be mature, and syntax from Ruffy
Bartolabac and Bagais, are still the same boys,
worshipful to the same God, inspired by the
same images, a mountain from whence come
the gods of imagery, the girl that still makes
the same heart miss a beat, the basketball
shoot, the military commands, exams one
seat apart in the gym, how can they be
carried on and on through years and years,
must be the ensaymada we ate, the air
we breathed, voiding our bladders like brothers
born on the same day, 1969 is the year,
easy on the keyboard-pen, brothers, for we have
a long, long way to go.